PANAMA CITY — Local police officials say they take the same level of care and concern when they investigate their own officers as they do when they investigate members of the public.

The News Herald requested from Bay County’s three largest police agencies all the citizen complaints, internal investigations and positive letters filed in 2012. After gathering the information, the newspaper asked local officials about how their agencies handle complaints and positive feedback from the public.

“It takes one bad apple to make this whole police department look bad,” said Chief Drew Whitman of the Panama City Beach Police Department. “And I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and one bad police officer is not going to make me or my police department or my city look bad.”

Whitman said his agency takes every complaint seriously, whether they come in by phone, are filed with the department in writing or start with a comment to the chief in the grocery store.

“My goal is to make sure I put the best product out there,” Whitman said. “I want to fix the problem. I want them to know we’re policing themselves; we’re not just going to cover stuff up.”

His sentiments were echoed by Maj. Tommy Ford of the Bay County Sheriff’s Office and Chief Scott Ervin of the Panama City Police Department.

A lot of complaints, especially less serious ones, are handled by the officer’s supervisor, officials with all three agencies said. These are things like an officer driving with his headlights off or being curt during a traffic stop.

“A lot of times there is a misunderstanding of the law,” Ervin said. For example, he said, an officer could be driving with his headlights off because he’s headed to a suspected burglary and has the right, under the law, to leave them off. Officers do this because they don’t want to tip off a suspect, Ervin said.

A curt traffic stop could be caused by an officer being concerned about getting hit by another car and not wanting to stay in the roadway for an extended period of time, he added.

In some other cases, the citizen either isn’t telling the truth or doesn’t realize exactly what happened.

In one incident, an officer pulled over a driver and ticketed him for cutting off the officer and nearly hitting the officer’s vehicle. The man wrote a complaint stating the officer was a “blatant liar.” The officer’s dash cam, however, showed the complainant cutting off and nearly hitting the officer’s cruiser.

Sometimes there is just no evidence to prove exactly what happened. It becomes the officer’s word against the citizen’s and if the officer doesn’t have a history of problems, the matter is most likely dropped, officials said.

But, if an officer has a history of the same type of infraction, supervisors take disciplinary action, officials with all three agencies said. When they start to see patterns develop, they take action with a progressive form of discipline that usually begins with a verbal warning and can end with termination.

Whitman said supervisors work with officers on everything from their attitudes and driving habits to making sure that handcuffs are not too tight.

By the numbers

The complaint records from 2012 show the Bay County Sheriff’s Office, Bay’s largest police agency with 207 deputies, had 50 formal complaints, and of those 12 were considered either sustained or partially sustained. Panama City Police, with 97 sworn officers, had 14 complaints and two of them were sustained. Beach PD’s 55 sworn officers saw 21 complaints and nine were sustained, the records show.

However, these are only formal complaints in which paperwork was filed. Complaints made in person or over the phone and handled by a supervisor may not have resulted in paperwork and were not part of the records request.

The records revealed instances when officers admitted they could have handled certain situations better. Another complaint resulted in an officer learning he could not write a traffic ticket for something the driver told him that he did not witness himself.

Other complaints sustained against officers in 2012 included unprofessional conduct and failing to conduct a thorough investigation.

Internal affairs

Internal affairs investigations are guided by Florida law, and there is a fine line investigators must follow when they start looking at their own.

For instance, in an investigation where officials are only concerned about policy violations, investigators can compel officers to give a statement. But, in a criminal investigation officers have the same rights to remain silent as everyone else.

Typically, investigators gather all of the information they believe they need and then present it to the officer ,who then can decide whether to make a statement, officials said.

“We’re police officers and we hold people accountable for breaking the law, so if somebody within our agency is doing that we’re going to hold them accountable as well,” Ford said.

The agencies differ on when to call in an outside agency to either take over an internal investigation or to offer assistance during an internal investigation. Ervin and Whitman both said they might call in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to work a criminal investigation involving officers.

Sheriff Frank McKeithen, on the other hand, feels strongly that BCSO should be able to investigate and arrest its own employees when something happens. The agency has, in fact, arrested its own employees several times since McKeithen became sheriff in 2003.

“The sheriff is held accountable by the citizens to run a department that is free of that kind of stuff, so he should be able to take care of those issues when they come up,” Ford said.

Findings

The Sheriff’s Office performed four internal investigations in 2012, and in three of them the officers involved resigned during the investigation. In one case a deputy was exonerated.

At Panama City, two officers were exonerated, but two others faced discipline for their actions. And, at the Panama City Beach Police Department, four investigations turned up wrongdoing, in one case it was determined the charges were false and one investigation is ongoing.

The causes of these investigations ranged from domestic violence, to DUI, to workplace harassment and unnecessary use of force.

When it comes to internal investigations, all the agencies call in the FDLE to conduct an independent investigation during officer-involved shootings and other cases where an officer’s actions may have caused a death.

“In those cases somebody’s life has been taken and we think it’s important to have the FDLE come in and conduct that investigation just for transparency and credibility,” Ford said.

Positive comments

It’s not all bad, though.

Each positive letter, email and in some cases brief synopses of phone calls are placed in officers’ personnel files. Copies of the letters also show up on department bulletin boards and are mentioned to the officers by supervisors as they are passing in the hallways or during staff meetings.

In 2012, the compliments came from a variety of situations. They included people who needed help getting a broken down vehicle out of the road, a woman who was rescued from an apparent intruder by the quick response of local officers, a family who’s loved one was saved thanks to CPR, and a family who officers assisted as they went through the first terrible moments of the loss of a loved one.

In one instance a meth addict wrote six officers thanking them for arresting her. The officers, she wrote, forced her to take the first step in turning her life around.

Just as complaints are used for discipline, positive letters from the public are used by supervisors when considering promotions and other circumstances. While no agency has hard and fast rules — such as four positive letters equals a raise — these responses from the public are valuable, officials said.

“That is a good indicator, an outside indicator, that somebody is doing a good job,” Ford said.

The total numbers may say something about the agencies, as well. Each agency had more positive letters on file than complaints. BCSO had 50 complaints and 74 positive letters, PCPD had 14 complaints and 23 positive letters, and Beach PD had 21 complaints and 43 positive letters.

“We do get a lot of kudos from the public,” Ervin said.

The numbers

Bay County Sheriff’s Office

Total Sworn Officers: 207

Complaints: 50

Positive letters: 74

Complaint results

Exonerated, unfounded or not sustained: 38

Sustained (either partially or completely): 12

Internal affairs investigations: 4

Exonerated: 1

Sustained: 3

Panama City Police Department

Total Sworn Officers: 97

Formal Complaints: 14

Positive letters: 23

Complaint results:

Exonerated, unfounded or not sustained: 12

Sustained (either partially or completely): 2

Internal affairs investigations: 4

Exonerated: 2

Sustained: 2

Panama City Beach Police Department

Panama City Beach Police Department

Total Sworn Officers 55

Complaints: 21

Positive letters: 43

Complaint results:

Exonerated, unfounded or not sustained: 12

Sustained: 9

Internal Affairs investigations 6

Exonerated: 1

Sustained or partially sustained: 4

Ongoing: 1

* Source records kept by each agency. Positive letters and complaints involving more than one officer were counted for each officer involved. Internal affairs investigations were counted as a single investigation even if it involved more than one officer.

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